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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Skipwith Cannéll

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The King

Skipwith Cannéll

From “Monoliths”

SEVEN full-paunched eunuchs came to me,

Bearing before them upon a silver shield

The secrets of my enemy.

As they crossed my threshold to stand,

With stately and hypocritical gesture

In a row before me,

One stumbled.

The dull, incurious eyes of the others

Blazed into no laughter,

Only a haggard malice

At the discomfiture

Of their companion.

Why should such T h i n g s have power

Not spoken for in the rules of men?

….

I would not receive them.

With my head covered I motioned them

To go forth from my presence.

Where shall I find an enemy

Worthy of me as him they defaced?

….

As they left me,

Bearing with them

Lewd shield and scarlet crown,

One paused upon the threshold,

Insolent,

To sniff a flower.

Even him I permitted to go forth

Safely.

….

Therefore

I have renounced my kingdom;

In a little bronze boat I have set sail

Out

Upon the sea.

There is no land, and the sea

Is black like the pool of ink

In the palm of a soothsayer,

Is black like the cypresses waiting

At midnight in the place of tombs.

….

My boat

Fears the white-lipped waves

That snatch at her,

Hungrily,

Furtively,

As they steal past like cats

Into the night:

And beneath me, in their hidden places,

The great fishes talk of me

In a tongue I have forgotten.